Prior to the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1966, Nelly Sachs, co-winner with S. Y. Agnon, was largely unknown, especially in this country. Almost nothing of her poetry had appeared in English translation; it was a rare article, whether scholarly or popular, that was devoted to her; and she was seldom referred to in books. Certainly there was no book in English about her. There still is none. In sum, she had virtually no audience here. (p. 356)

[It] was not easy for her to emerge from her general obscurity. She could claim no participation in the revival of a modern Jewish state or in its newly emerging literature. Her language was German, not Hebrew, or what is even more popular with an American audience, Yiddish. Her origins seemed somehow both archaic and anachronistic, in either case hard to sentimentalize; born in Berlin, the old Berlin, she...